


Oscula Gratiae

by fleurofthecourt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angelic Grace, Castiel's Loss of Grace, Fairy Tale Elements, Introspection, M/M, Mark of Cain, Season/Series 09, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 15:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1514846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurofthecourt/pseuds/fleurofthecourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The angels were put on this earth to admire, protect, and, most of all, to love humanity. </p><p>Yet, as they waged holy wars and time wore endlessly forward, abandoned by God, the angels forgot. </p><p>Their only hope of remembering their true purpose lie in a spell being cast upon and by one of their own -- a spell that would, seemingly, damn them all. </p><p>Believing that the spell would merely cause the angels to fall from Heaven, Metatron cast it upon Castiel. </p><p>Metatron believed he was saving Heaven from the presence of his brethren; Castiel believed that he had, once again, failed them. </p><p>Both were wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oscula Gratiae

**Author's Note:**

> The title is Latin for "Kisses of Grace" 
> 
> Diverges after 9 x 11: First Born 
> 
> I would kind of like to post this whole fic at once when I'm done, but I know that the more canonically jossed I get the less I'm going to want to post it period so I'm just doing it now... 
> 
> Just FYI, this is fic is basically made of my headcanon that the spell is the weirdest Destiel shipping ever [I thought Metatron was a shipper long before Meta-Fiction... an insane shipper]. Despite that, I hope someone enjoys this...

_Heart_

_Salt Lake City, Utah ; Public Library_

“These will do. Thank you.” Castiel’s eyes flickered past the library’s reference desk and into the stacks, where the faint overhead light dimmed as dusk settled outside. Brusquely, he moved towards a corner far removed from the building’s other activity and settled down with the library’s oldest materials on fairy tales and folklore. 

His fingers trailed along the silver-edged pages of a light blue volume noted to contain the works of Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Anderson. Despite its extravagant exterior, the tome was thick and dusty, its inside pages yellowed from time and lack of use. The thick aroma of vanilla from the broken down lignin likely would have engulfed him if it weren't for his possession of the stolen grace. As it was, it merely tickled at the dulled human senses of his vessel. 

The stories he found inside were of the same ilk as those in Metatron's collection, as Sam and Dean had described it to him. Many were old enough to have been passed down by word of mouth before finally being penned in all manner of versions and likely had angelic variants that he had heard long, long ago. 

He rested his chin in his palm as he slowly paged through the collection. He wasn’t tired; he couldn’t be. Yet, after being human for so long, he hadn’t quite fought off the habitual reaction of dwindling daylight meaning dwindling energy. 

He blinked and squinted at the fading ink of several pages of full color illustrations, not certain that this book had been an appropriate choice for his research. 

He wasn't certain what he had hoped to find in these age old stories as they certainly would not explain how to reverse Metatron's spell. He had hoped, perhaps, for some insight into Metatron, yet all he was finding was insight into himself. 

Metatron was the wolf, the old woman with the poisoned apple, and the wicked prince who lived off ill gotten stories. Castiel was the one who took the apple, touched the spinning wheel, and asked the wolf for directions. He trusted too easily, too freely. 

He had tried for a time, to be like many of the women in these stories, blissfully unaware of the poison seeping through their kingdoms as they fell into slumber and waited for a stranger to come along and be their salvation. 

Yet Ephraim had found him idling, and he had had to force himself awake so that he would truly see how much the angels were suffering, again, at his hands. Afterwards, he refused to allow Heaven to fall into the same disrepair as the overgrown and crumbling castles in these tales -- not for his mistakes. 

He knew that, graceless or not, the angels needed him. 

The spell had to be undone, and since it had been cast upon him, he saw it as his obligation to discover how. 

He wished, now, that reversing the spell was as straightforward as receiving a kiss, as was so often the case in these fables. True love’s kiss was such a simple and pure solution. No strange ingredients, no trials, merely two souls entwining. 

It was a thought that left him with a strange, wistful feeling. 

There was a part of him, a more or less human part, that longed not only for the simplicity but the kiss itself. 

It was not a new longing, not completely, simply one that he had pushed to the back corners of his mind, for, despite all the remnants of humanity that stubbornly clung to him, he was no longer human. When he had been, though, many emotions, which had lie latent and weakened in his angelic state, had swelled, blossomed, and burst -- the strongest of which had been his feelings for Dean. 

He had suspected, long before he fell, that he was in love with the other man. After falling, however, how much he had longed for him, even when, or, perhaps, especially when, in Dean’s presence, had only confirmed his suspicions. 

He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, were he in a fairy tale, Dean would be his prince. 

The part of him that was still drowsing along with the sinking sunlight wanted to fall asleep dreaming of Dean’s kiss breaking Metatron’s spell. 

The part of him that was on a mission to find and confront Metatron directly knew that this was a frivolous notion, a notion that shouldn’t even be entertained. 

Of course, even if it weren’t a trivial desire, it was not as though his feelings for Dean were returned -- not in the romantic sense, anyway -- and, even if they were, neither of them were princes, and this was not how angelic spells were undone. 

Fairy tales were not meant for angels for angels were not meant to fall in love -- not with one another and least of all with those they were meant to guard. 

Believing his research to have been in vain, Castiel gathered the books up with a weary sigh. As he did, a flash of long, curly, red hair in the stacks caught his eye, and an unbidden memory of the nephilim gripped him. 

A sick shiver coursed through him and made his stomach roil; he did not like to think of her. 

The first night he had spent as a human, he had been unable to shake the sight of her eyes when he closed his. They told him how many lies he had believed. 

When he had first seen their unnatural glow, he had seen that rumors of angelic romance were not myths. When the glowing green irises flashed in his memory later, with the weight of human emotion tearing him raw, he knew that he had hurt three people when he killed her. The nephilim herself and the two who had created her. 

He doubted Metatron had spoken the truth when he said she was an abomination. 

Perhaps it was his own weakness for humanity that made it so, but he believed that she had been created out of love. For if she had been, she could not have been evil. For love could not create evil.


End file.
